Record

Code	DS/UK/145
Dates	1851-1930
Person Name	Watt; George (1851-1930); Sir; botanist, knight
Surname	Watt
Forenames	George
Title	Sir
Epithet	botanist, knight
Activity	Born in Old Meldrum, Aberdeenshire on 24 April 1851, he was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and Marischal College in Aberdeen, then at the University of Glasgow where he graduated in medicine in 1873. In the same year he took up the post of Professor of Botany at Calcutta University. Whilst in India he entered into the service of the Indian Government and held several posts including Commissioner for India on Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London 1885-1886; Reporter to Government of India on Economic Products 1887-1903; President of the Pharmacological Section of the Indian Medical Congress 1894, Officer in Charge at the Industrial Museum in Calcutta 1894-1903; and member and honorary secretary of the Central Indigenous Drugs Committee of India. He received the Daniel Hanbury Gold medal from the Pharmaceutical Society in 1901, and was knighted and retired from service in India in 1903. In retirement he moved to Dumfries and Galloway settling in Lockerbie in 1910. He was a Justice of the Peace for Dumfriesshire, served a representative for Lockerbie on Dumfriesshire County Council and as a Director at Crichton Royal Institution, where he was also Convener of the Gardens Committee. During Watt's time as Convenor of the Gardens Committee the hospital gardens were considerably developed with a range of glasshouses, improvements to the flower and kitchen gardens and he personally oversaw the construction of a rock garden. He died in Lockerbie in 1930. A rhododendron (Rhododendron wattii) has been named after him.

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